Youth Olympic Games medallist Alex Hall: "I try my hardest to balance competitive and filming schedule"

After winning gold in the Real Ski competition earlier this year, Alex Hall became the only freestyle skier to have won medals across four different X Games disciplines.

Having won silver at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lillehammer 2016, the American will now be looking to add to his impressive medal collection at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Olympics.com With less than three months until Beijing 2022, how are your preparations going?

Alex Hall: It's been fantastic. We've just been starting our season in Europe, usually we show up in the fall and go to either Switzerland or Austria and do some glacier skiing, so we showed up in the middle of September. And I've pretty much been over here ever since between Austria, Italy, and Switzerland, just doing a bunch of skiing. It's been really, fun so far.

How are you feeling about qualification?

I'm feeling good. I'm just taking it one step at a time. I ski my best when I'm not overthinking stuff, and I’m just really enjoying my time on skis. So, I'm trying to keep my focus on having fun and just skiing with my friends. I think that's going to get the best result for me, hopefully. I've been feeling great, and it's been a fun start to the season.

Beijing would be your second Olympic Winter Games after PyeongChang – how do you look back on your experiences there?

It was a really cool experience to go [to PyeongChang]. I was definitely very fortunate to be able to go but, looking back, I didn’t do as well as I maybe could or would have wanted to. I was young at the time, so I still had a lot to learn. The rest of the US team was a lot more experienced and older than me, and I kind of felt like the odd one out in a way. There were some things that maybe I missed out on by being quite a bit younger [than the rest of the team], and I think they were all in a very different spot in their careers. They were all set on winning medals, and I was just kind of fortunate to have qualified for the team. So, I think we were all in different head spaces, but overall it was amazing; it was really fun. I got to experience some of the traditional things, like watching other events and just hanging out at the Athletes’ Village. I had a good time.

You also competed in the Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2016 in Lillehammer – what was that experience like?

That was a cool event. Again, I was very young at that event, but that's obviously the same for everyone there, and it was a fun experience. I'd been to Lillehammer a couple times previously, so I was not new to the area, and it was just a really good time. We got to do the slopestyle at Lillehammer, and I also competed in the halfpipe in Oslo. I ended up getting the silver medal [in slopestyle], which was a nice icing on top of the cake.

Do you feel you were able to learn anything from your time at the YOG?

Yeah, it was cool. I think it was unique in a sense that the camaraderie was very strong at that event, and you cared a lot about sports that you don't pay a lot of attention to usually. It was fun to follow everything else and it felt good to have that team spirit. And it was cool to be a part of an event on that scale, where previously I don't think I had experienced being at events that were on that scale. It was unique in a bunch of different ways, and it helped to open my eyes up to what may be coming.

Did you watch the Olympics much when you were younger?

Growing up, at least for freestyle skiing and slopestyle, I think a lot of people around my age or older would probably have a similar answer in that the main thing we watched was X Games, because slopestyle wasn't in the Olympics for a long time. It made it debut in 2014. Aged 10 through 16, when I was into freestyle skiing, but freestyle wasn't in the Olympics, I think X Games was the main thing I watched and that was really what I aspired to be – to be an X Games athlete and get X Games medals and be part of that. And then it was later when the Olympics came around, I think I was 16 when I watched that event, and it was super cool to watch. I stayed home from school that day, to watch that event. And my parents let me stay in to watch it. There was the American sweep of slopestyle skiing medals, so that was super cool to witness, and now I'm good friends with all the guys who made that sweep. So that definitely was pretty inspirational, and it got me hyped to potentially and hopefully go to the Olympics one day.

Do you think Olympic inclusion has been important for slopestyle?

I think a lot of younger kids that I talk to nowadays, it's definitely what they grew up watching. Kids who are 15 or 16 right now, they grew up in a time where the Olympics was the thing for freestyle skiing. So, I think for them, it's something that helped them get into the sport. And it's cool that we get a couple of days every four years where a lot of people are watching what we do – people who aren't necessarily accustomed to freestyle skiing. And it's really cool that we get to showcase that on a much larger platform than we usually do.

We recently saw a lot of athletes speak out about the impact of climate change, and you have also spoken about the increased melting that you’ve witnessed in snow parks. Is climate change an issue that you’re passionate about?

Growing up, I don't know if I was necessarily passionate about it, but I obviously knew what it was and its implications. And I think I learned at a pretty young age that it’s obviously a real thing, and it's a very pressing issue. Being a professional skier, it plays so much into our sport and what we do. Even just in my short life, I've noticed so much difference over the years; right now, I'm skiing up at a glacier called Stubai near Innsbruck. It's easily the least snow I've ever seen at this time of year; the glacier just looks so melted out, and we're pretty much skiing on glacial ice – there's no fresh snow on top. So, the facts are super obvious. Being a skier, you experience it first-hand. It's crazy to see how much it's changed even in just the last couple of years, which really is a very short timeframe when you look at it in the grand scheme of things.

Is it an issue that skiers are speaking more and more about?

For sure. It's a conversation that a lot of people have. And I think skiers, specifically, talk about it a lot – especially the impacts and the differences we see. But if I'm going to be honest, there's not a tonne of talk about solutions. There are small things you can do personally, but on a larger scale there's a lot that plays into solutions, and they're much easier said than done. But it's something that many, if not all, my friends and fellow pro athletes are aware of.

Away from competition, you also spend a lot of time making videos of your ski runs, which also led to you winning the first X Games Real Ski competition. Is this something you want to focus on more in the future?

I want to keep skiing and having fun with that. What I love about freestyle skiing is that a huge part of our sport is about creating video projects and content. I've been super into that throughout my ski career, and I try my hardest to balance my competitive schedule with my filming schedule. It's hard sometimes because there are so many competitions during the season, but whenever I have free time, I try and squeeze film projects in. I definitely want to focus on the filming side of things more in the future and try and keep that balance up between events and competitions and the filming. Apart from that, I just want to keep having fun with it. I think there’s going to be a time where I maybe don't have as much fun anymore. But right now, I feel good about it, and I've been having a tonne of fun.